


Balance

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Arguing, Consequences, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Loneliness, Magic, Quests, Responsibility, Romance, Shapeshifting, Slow Build, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-30
Updated: 2006-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-28 09:22:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/990377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sara didn't accept Jareth's bargain, but she didn't leave the Labyrinth unmarked. A story of consequences, and two lonely, stubborn people learning to live with each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Running From Her Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> This story (or really, these linked stories, because they weren't originally written as a unit) were inspired by words #50, #65, and #66 on the 15minuteficlets Livejournal community. You may notice a style change between the first two chapters and the final three -- that's because the last three were a single story that I split up in order to keep the word counts and pacing more even.

As the years went by, Sara began to realize that something was missing from her life. Her dreams were still the dreams of a young girl, dreams of fame and beauty -- airy, insubstantial fantasies. While other girls began to flirt and talk of sex, Sara couldn't get over her discomfort at the very idea of looking at boys.

Somehow they all reminded her of Jareth. Oh, they couldn't match his unnatural beauty, or the intangible danger that shimmered around him, but something about their maleness repulsed her.

For a time she wondered if she might be a lesbian, and agreed to a few experiments with one of her friends. But as their hands fumbled over faces and buttons, the light in the other girl's eyes darkened and sparked and Sara found herself frozen, her mind locked on the hypnotic shards of light that flashed from Jareth's crystals as they danced to his whims. Her stiff, mindless reactions finally drove that friend, and Sara's hope of an alternate normality, away.

She simply couldn't react to anything vaguely approaching sexual, or to any of the other prosaic mysteries of adulthood. They froze her mind, repulsed her body, and drove her to huddle in her room and call her childhood friends through her mirror. But she buried her doubts and fears and pushed on through all the detritus of a normal teenage life, until the chasm between her inner self and the smiling face she showed the world seemed infinite. Sara couldn't belong in Jareth's world, but she didn't belong to her own anymore either.

She dreamed, sometimes, of her fantasy dance with Jareth and their final confrontation in the Escher room. He had almost seemed sincere at the end, she thought, almost seemed to really care about her decision, and for more than just his reluctance to lose a game.

It was as if he wanted her to like him, she realized one morning. As if he saw her as herself, as _Sara_ , not just another girl caught up in his twisted kingdom and convoluted games.

And she had rejected him.

"You have no power over me," she'd told him, and now he didn't. Neither did anyone or anything that reminded her of him. All the pieces of her life, the parts that should have let her become a woman, were gone, missing. She had left them with Jareth in the Labyrinth, and not even her magical friends could retrieve what she had willingly abandoned.

Sara closed her eyes and refused to cry. She had made her choice, made an utterly wrong choice, but she still had one chance. Maybe this time she wouldn't even mind losing the game; at least then she wouldn't have to live as half a person.

"I wish the goblins would take me away," she whispered, and waited for the owl to fly in her window.


	2. Abeyance

"My kingdom is great; you have no power over me," she had said. And so he did not.

Jareth was, after all, bound by rules, as were all living beings. His were simply different from most others. He had power to cross the boundaries of worlds, power to enter and shape dreams, power to fashion his own realm to his whim -- but he could only touch what he was invited to touch, his games and goals were shaped by those who played against him, and he had to come when he was called. That was his penance.

Sara invited him to touch her, to reshape her world -- but only thus far and no father. For her the Labyrinth was a compendium of childhood wonders, petty nightmares, goodhearted friends, and bumbling enemies who were easily thwarted. Only he retained his true form. Only he had power to stand in the way of her self-imposed quest.

And then even he had no more power to move her. She rejected him, and with that rejection she cast off the touch of magic and retreated into her safe, ordinary world. Until that point, she had followed the pattern laid down by the first child who, dissatisfied with her life, had called on magic for selfish whims and thus summoned Jareth to test her. That one had not been prepared to pay the price, and her successors had likewise been defeated by the Labyrinth or tempted into disaster by his bargains. They had lost their magic. Sara won the game -- the first to win in centuries -- but she turned away and he thought at first that she had renounced her magic despite her victory.

His hope lay in the impression that maybe she hadn't understood the purpose of her test. She had imagined their game to be a struggle over her brother's fate, when in fact it was a struggle over the shape of her soul. She had left something in the Labyrinth -- he could feel it, trapped in a crystal spell -- but maybe it hadn't been her magic.

Impression turned to conviction when he saw that Sara retained small ties to his realm and used them to call her new friends into her formerly prosaic home. She was unaware that she drew on her own power to move them across the worlds, that her power brushed against his with each summons... and that her friends completed their journeys only on his sufferance.

So Jareth watched, and as Sara tried awkwardly to fit into her old world after knowing the touch of magic, his hope grew, for although she'd rejected him, she didn't turn to another. Somehow she was still the innocent girl with wounded eyes who had first caught his attention, only now the light of magic shone within her, casting a subtle allure over her words and gestures. She captivated him anew each day, and her dreams, filled with her longing for him and his world, tested his resolve not to interfere with her choice, whatever its terms had been.

When she finally called him again, the icy touch of his joy lingered over the Labyrinth as a white owl flew between the worlds.


	3. None So Blind

"I wish the goblins would take me away," Sara said, and Jareth whisked her from the tiny college room, across the chasm between worlds to his castle at the Labyrinth's heart. A crystal spell shattered, and Sara's old bargain was broken. Things could begin to change.

That was the easy part.

Jareth was an absolute ruler; Sara was used to fighting against authority. Jareth was accustomed to solitude; Sara was happiest surrounded by friends. Jareth was a creature of whim and magic, used to rewriting the shape of his world overnight; Sara still considered the world in terms of unchangeable laws.

Both remembered their previous encounters with a touch of longing. Neither was willing to be the first to admit to any attraction. And yet they refused to leave each other in peace.

Sara installed Hoggle, Ludo, Sir Didymus, and various other bumbling friends in the castle despite their fears and Jareth's freely expressed disgust. Jareth responded by changing the paths and forms of the Labyrinth until the whole realm was cold stone, glittering crystal, and darkness, and the direction of gravity was optional. The next morning, Sara found herself wandering on the bedroom ceiling when she tried to walk through her door, her friends barricaded themselves into the kitchens, and the flowers she'd planted around the castle were dying from frost.

"Fix it yourself," Jareth snapped when Sara stormed into the Escher room -- now nothing uncommon in the new pattern of the castle -- to complain.

It took Sara a week to realize that she _could_ affect the Labyrinth. It took Jareth another to notice that even if he wanted to, he couldn't stop her from shaping his world anymore. The Labyrinth had chosen a mistress as well as a master.

Jareth threw her out of the castle.

\---------------

The Labyrinth divided itself in half, one for Jareth and one for Sara, overlapping near the castle at its heart. Sara kept hers warm, a shambling summer maze of hedges, bogs, forests, and habitations for the odd creatures of this magical world. Jareth's was colder, filled with stones, sharp edges, and the castaway bits that Sara pushed out of her realm. She kept the sun. He took the stars.

The old junkyard, where they once danced in a glittering dream, ricocheted between the realms until it lay like a no man's land between Jareth's castle and Sara's new moss-covered house. Neither was willing to take it. Neither was willing to destroy it.

"It's a mess," Hoggle grumbled to Sara. "Get rid of it."

She shook her head. "No. I won't give Jareth the satisfaction. I won't let him pretend it wasn't real."

"Pretend _what_ wasn't real?"

Sara shrugged. "He never told me."

"Then how do you know he's pretending anything?" Hoggle asked, exasperated. "I think you're even more confused than the first time you came to the Labyrinth."

"Maybe," Sara said. "But I got the best of him once. I won't give in this time either." She went back to coaxing a withered tree into sprouting new leaves.

"She's gone completely insane," Hoggle said to Jareth several days later, when he ran into his former king pacing restlessly along the border between night and day. "Goes on and on about dreams and reality and not letting you pretend it wasn't real, whatever 'it' is. Do you know what she's talking about?"

Jareth scowled. "Yes. And I'm not pretending; you can tell her that. Tell her I haven't forgotten, either."

Hoggle shuffled his feet uncertainly. Jareth raised a hand -- crystal spheres blossomed in the air around him -- and Hoggle ducked his head. "Yes, sir! I'll tell her. In fact, I'll go tell her right now."

"Good," said Jareth. He turned, opened a door that hadn't been there a moment before, and vanished into the goblins' tunnels.

"They're both crazy," Hoggle said to himself. "They deserve each other." Then he felt guilty for putting Sara on Jareth's level, but he shuffled off to carry Jareth's message to his friend.


	4. To Destruction

For the third night in a row, a white owl perched outside Sara's house, motionless. She spent several hours resolutely ignoring it, trying to convince herself that she didn't want to talk to him, that she hadn't missed seeing him around, that it meant nothing that he hadn't forgotten their dance. Finally she gave in and opened the kitchen window.

"What do you want?"

Jareth unfolded himself in a blur of feathers, leaning against the outside of the window with the boneless grace that always drew Sara's eyes. "I'm being called," he said. "The goblins are restless and tunnels are opening to your world. It won't be long before someone will try to solve the Labyrinth."

"So what?"

Jareth's face froze into a mask of icy disdain. "Half of the Labyrinth is currently under your control. Set appropriate challenges."

Sara shook her head. "I'm not part of your games."

Jareth's hand tightened dangerously on the windowsill. "The Labyrinth is more than a game. _Think_ , Sara -- would you give magic to anyone who wanted it? Everyone who touches magic must be tested. Even us." He held up a crystal, showing her the memory of Toby's infant face. "Did you think I took your brother for my own amusement? Why would I want a squalling brat? What good was he in this world? I test the dangerous people, the ones who use power to satisfy selfish whims. If they can't set aside their fears and see beyond themselves, they lose their magic. This one will travel through your territory. Set appropriate challenges."

The white owl screeched derisively and soared over the junkyard, vanishing behind the stone towers and crystal spires of the castle.

Sara picked the crystal ball from the windowsill and stared at it thoughtfully, remembering. Then she closed her window and began to weave obstructions through her realm.

\---------------

"You don't understand anything -- you hate me. You're always ruining my life. I wish you were dead!" That's what the latest victim of the Labyrinth -- a girl named Christina -- had said to her mother when she'd refused to extend Christina's curfew so she could go to a classmate's party.

Sara listened through a hidden crystal globe as Christina explained her situation to Hoggle and asked if Jareth would really kill her mother if she couldn't solve the Labyrinth. Sara knew the answer now, and Hoggle at least suspected the truth of Jareth's odd abductions, but the pessimistic dwarf just shrugged. "He might. You never know what Lord Jareth might do. On the other hand, he only rules half the Labyrinth -- if you stay in this half, you can get close to the castle with a lot less danger."

Christina perked up. "Really? Who rules this half?"

"Lady Sara." Hoggle raised his lantern and stumped off through the dim, overgrown hedges. "You'll have to get past her to reach the castle, and she doesn't like Jareth."

"It should be easy, then," Christina said, swatting aside prickly branches as she followed him from the borderlands into the Labyrinth proper.

"You keep thinking that," Hoggle said dourly. "You just keep thinking that."

\---------------

Jareth popped in and out a few times, at one point resetting Christina's clock from 12 hours to 3, but he was limited by Sara's control over this half of the Labyrinth. He couldn't transport the girl directly and had to resort to verbal threats and occasional bits of lesser magic, like bursts of fire and a storm of knives. In the old days, Sara suspected, he'd simply have changed the ground to quicksand or tossed Christina into the path of the tunnel cleaning machine.

She understood the need to keep magic from the hands of those who'd misuse it, but she thought Jareth walked very close to the line of abusing his own power.

Finally Christina inched her way along the narrow beam that spanned Sara's new moat -- the temporarily borrowed Bog of Eternal Stench -- and knocked on the door of the moss-covered house.

Sara ushered her in with a smile.

"Um. Lady Sara?" Christina seemed surprised to find someone so normal after her encounters with Jareth and the other Labyrinth denizens.

"Yes, I'm Sara. You're Christina, and you wished your mother was dead." Sara noted Christina's flush of shame, as well as her defiantly raised head. The girl had conflicting feelings. Did she not fully grasp what she'd done wrong, or was she simply not letting Sara intimidate her the way Jareth had done so effortlessly?

"I can bring your mother here," Sara said, raising her hand to forestall any interruptions. "I can bring her here and send the two of you home, but there's a price.

To her credit, Christina frowned and asked, cautiously, "What price?"

Sara sat down at her kitchen table and conjured two cups of hot chocolate; Christina took hers warily. "Did you think that just anyone could invoke the Labyrinth?" Sara asked, elliptically. "No. Only those with a gift for magic. At the moment, Jareth and I are having a... disagreement. Promise to lend me your strength, and I'll short-circuit Jareth's challenge. You never agreed to it, after all. Why should you suffer the consequences?"

She could see Christina turning this over in her mind. Sara sipped her hot chocolate, hoping the girl would make the honorable choice, but then Christina smiled. "You're right, it isn't fair. I didn't know that jerk was listening to me. Bring my mother here and I promise I'll do whatever you want."

Damn. If the girl tried to weasel out of the consequences of one rash impulse, how many other consequences would she try to avoid? Still, Sara had offered the deal in good conscience. She walked to her window, opened it, and turned back to Christina. "Wait here," she said, and then concentrated as hard as she could.

She flew out in a rustle of brown feathers.


	5. Answers

Jareth stalked across his throne room, wondering for the ten thousandth time why he bothered to socialize with goblins. It was true that they were his responsibility in a way the other residents of the Labyrinth weren't -- they were the other half of his penance, the reverse of his intricate games -- but even when they showed flashes of intelligence and competence, they left the castle in a shambles and forced him to waste magic shifting their mess elsewhere.

He waved his hand at the floor. Crystal shattered on the stones, spread like ice blooming over still water, and vanished, carrying dirt and bones down into the tunnels.

He turned his attention to the windows, just in time for a brown sparrow to fly through the broken panes. It shimmered for a moment and unfolded into Sara. Jareth looked pointedly at her feet, planted firmly _within_ his home -- he, at least, had had the courtesy to stay outside her window -- and then raised an eyebrow in silent inquiry.

"She accepted a bargain," Sara said, sounding oddly regretful. "In return for her mother and escape from the Labyrinth, she'll lend me her magic to use against you. She won't face the consequences of her wish."

Jareth nodded. "Set the terms long and give the power to the Labyrinth -- when the girl dies, it will seep back into the world above. I'll bring the woman."

Sara nodded in return. "You'll have to show me how to do this," she said.

Jareth snapped his fingers, summoning a crystal over his hand. "It's simple. You reach toward her with your gift and find the place in her that resonates. Then you pull, and store the magic in one of these." He sent the crystal across the distance between them, to hover over Sara's upturned palm. She studied the reflections in the ball for a long moment, and then tucked the crystal away into nothingness.

"Twenty minutes," she said. "This time, come to my door."

\---------------

The girl -- Christine, Christina, Katrina, something like that -- shuddered when Sara pulled out her magic. She pressed her hands on Sara's kitchen table to steady herself and said, "There. Now bring me my mother."

Jareth banished his spy globe and unbound the girl's mother from her enchanted sleep. The woman appeared by his side, looking dazed, and he cast a weak spell of confusion to keep her from struggling or realizing that she'd left her world. Then he took her hand in his and knocked on Sara's door.

"Good timing," Sara said as she opened it, "but I felt you cheating."

Jareth shrugged. "I felt you watching before; consider it a returned favor." He ushered the compliant woman into Sara's house and smiled at the shocked girl standing in the kitchen doorway. "Your mother, as promised. But I think we'll keep your magic -- you never set a time limit on that loan."

"You lied!" the girl shouted at Sara. "You tricked me!"

"I think you'll find that she kept her bargain," Jareth said, lowering his voice for dramatic effect, "which is more than I can say for you. You couldn't face the consequences of your mistake, so we've made sure you won't make any more mistakes like that." His smile widened.

"Jareth. Stop."

He turned to Sara, surprised at the bite in her voice, and recognized her expression as the one she wore just before she denied his bargain and left the Labyrinth so many years ago. Before she denied and left him. "Why?" he asked.

Sara looked over at the girl, who was now clinging to her bewildered mother, and waved her hand sharply. They vanished. Jareth felt them cross back to the world above and dismissed them from his mind. Sara was much more important.

"You said we have to test people," Sara said, still looking away from him, "to see if they're worthy of their power. Who tests us? Who keeps you from making mistakes?"

Jareth opened his mouth, considered her expression, and thought better of his first answer. "The Labyrinth," he said eventually. "It's a construct of the world's magic, given a vague form of intelligence by generations of human dreams and stories. Once, the Labyrinth was the only test, but its mind is slow and easily confused. It let too many people keep their magic."

Sara's face lost some of its diamond-sharp determination, softened by confusion. "If the Labyrinth is alive, then why does it let us change things? Why did it pick _you_ as its king?"

"Because I made a foolish bargain," Jareth said, "and then I tried to break it." He flicked his fingers, dismissing the details in a shower of light. "I'm bound to the Labyrinth. I help it think. It keeps me sane. And the goblins don't let me forget."

"I see," Sara said after a long minute. Something shone in her eyes, some vast, all-important choice, and Jareth remembered the dazzling shock when she'd reached his castle the first time, when she'd stood before him and resisted all his temptations -- the thought that maybe this time he'd found someone strong enough to make the right choice and not forswear herself later as he had done. He tensed, waiting for the splintered rejection that had followed her first choice.

"I think you need better reminders than the goblins," Sara said. Jareth blinked. Then she smiled, and added, "Besides, the castle looks better with flowers, and I think my plants miss the night."

For all his quick wits, it took Jareth nearly a minute to realize that Sara wasn't angry with him anymore. It took him nearly five more minutes, several pointed looks, and quite a lot of frantic gesturing from Hoggle (who was standing on tiptoes at the kitchen window, just out of Sara's sight), to extend his hand and actually invite her back into the castle. She accepted. As her fingers closed around Jareth's, Hoggle collapsed in relief.

The next morning, the junkyard quietly dissipated into the fabric of the Labyrinth.

\---------------

They still had disagreements, of course. They fought over Sara's friends, Jareth's malicious glee in his games, and the decoration of the castle. Above all, Jareth insisted their disagreements had been about magic and rules all along. Sara knew they had been more personal, but she didn't argue too strongly.

She knew how hard it was to admit that you were lonely.

**Author's Note:**

> To me, _Labyrinth_ reads as a story of the rejection of female sexuality.
> 
> Sara is on the verge of becoming a young woman, moving away from girlhood, and Jareth represents all her blossoming and suppressed sexuality. The other inhabitants of the Labyrinth, with their colorful and amusing character, represent the childhood she clings to. This is why Jareth is dangerous and her friends are safe.
> 
> At the end of the film, Jareth pleads with Sara, saying "Only submit to me and I will be your slave," but Sara rejects him utterly. He has no power over her. She shuts herself off from sexuality and retreats into the shelter of childhood. This point is further driven home when she calls her friends through the mirror and they begin to have a party. She is surrounding herself with childlike friends and rejecting the potentially dangerous world of womanhood.
> 
> Granted, this is all subtext and Sara really does need to defeat Jareth in order to rescue her brother Toby, but I think someday she may regret the consequences of the method she chooses to fight him.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Overground (The Rat Without A Maze Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1594556) by [qwerty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwerty/pseuds/qwerty)




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